Good Citizens Need Not Fear

by Maria Reva

  Now that Milena Markivna had entered my life, I felt I had finally been noticed. The vetting process for the Honor Guard was still possible. My reassignment to Moscow to see my mother and father was still possible. I believed it was possible to make gains with hard work.

  From that point on I followed Milena Markivna’s husband with greater vigilance, and in turn Milena Markivna followed me with greater vigilance. If Konstantyn Illych rifled his pockets for a missing kopek for the newspaper, Milena Markivna’s voice behind me would say, “Surely you have an extra kopek for the man,” and surely enough, I would. If I dropped a sunflower-seed shell on the floor while pacing the corridor outside the couple’s apartment, behind the peephole of Suite 76 Milena Markivna’s voice would say, “It’s in the corner behind you,” and surely enough, it was. She was a master observer, better than I.

  (It should not go unsaid that, beyond mention of the reprimand of Milena Markivna’s family, and of her employment as a polyclinic custodian, her file contained little information. On the surface, this was because she was born in the province surrounding Kirovka and not in the town itself, but I suspected it was a matter of rank: if Milena Markivna were indeed my superior, tasked with the evaluation of my conduct and aptitude for ceremonial duty, of course I would not have access to her full history. Information is compartmentalized to mitigate leaks, much like compartments are sealed off in ships to prevent sinking.)

  Konstantyn Illych grew accustomed to my omnipresence, even seemed to warm to it. Once, after a bulk shipment to the Gastronom, I watched him haul home a 30-kilogram sack of sugar. By the time he reached his building, Number 1933 Ivansk (at least, this was the theoretical address indicated in his case file—the building number appeared to have been chiseled out of the concrete), the sack developed a small tear. Konstantyn Illych would be unable to haul the sack up to the tenth floor without losing a fair share of granules. The elevator was out of the question due to the rolling blackouts, and so I offered to pinch the tear as he carried the load over his shoulder, and he did not decline. Many minutes later we stood in front of Suite 76, Konstantyn Illych breathless from the effort. Since I was there I might as well come in, he said, to help with the sack. He unlocked the steel outer door and the red upholstered inner door, then locked the doors behind us—all this with an excessive jingling of numerous keys. Here was a man with a double door, he wanted me to take note: a Man of Importance.

  The apartment was very small, surely smaller than the sanitary standard of 9 square meters allotted per person, and only marginally heated. After we maneuvered the sack to the balcony, I scanned the suite for a trace of Milena Markivna—a blouse thrown over a chair, the scent of an open jar of hand cream, perhaps—but saw only books upon books, bursting from shelves and boxes lining the already narrow corridor, books propping up the lame leg of an armchair, books stacked as a table for a lamp under which more books were read, books even in the bathroom, all of them poetry or on poetry, all presumably Konstantyn Illych’s. A corner of the main room had been spared for a glass buffet of fencing trophies and foils, and on top of the buffet stood a row of family portraits. I tried to find Milena Markivna in the sun-bleached photographs but these, too, belonged to Konstantyn Illych—the large head made him recognizable at any age. I wondered if she lived there, if she was even his wife.

  Milena Markivna entered the apartment a few minutes later, with a soft scratch of keys. After shrugging off her long black raincoat to reveal the bleach-flecked smock underneath—a marvelous imitation of a custodial uniform—she appraised me as I imagined she might appraise a rug her husband had fished out of a dumpster. Would the piece be useful, or would it collect dust and get in the way? Her expression suggested the latter, but her husband was leading me into the kitchen, the point of no return. Once a guest steps into the kitchen, to let them leave without being fed and beveraged is of course unconscionable.

  Milena Markivna leaned her hip against the counter, watching Konstantyn Illych mete out home brew into three cloudy shot glasses. “Lena, fetch the sprats, will you?”

  Milena Markivna indicated she needed the stool, which I immediately vacated. She stepped up on it to retrieve a can from the back of the uppermost cupboard, then set the can down on the table, with some force, and looked at me, also with some force, presumably daring me to do something about the unopened sprats. I produced the eight-layer pocketknife I always kept on my person. In an elaborate display of resourcefulness, I flicked through the screwdriver, ruler, fish scaler and hook disgorger, scissors, pharmaceutical spatula, magnifying lens, hoof cleaner, shackle opener, and wood saw, before reaching the can opener. Its metal claw sank into the tin with so little resistance, I could have been cutting margarine. Milena Markivna must have noticed the surprise on my face. She asked if I knew about the exploding cans.

  I conceded I did not.

  “It’s something I heard,” she said, “something about the tin, how they don’t make it like they used to. People are getting shrapnel wounds.” After a pause, she gave a dry mirthless laugh and so I laughed as well.

  Before Konstantyn Illych passed around the shots, I laid a sprat on my tongue and chewed it slowly to let the bitter oil coat the inside of my mouth and throat, minimizing the effects of the not-yet-ingested alcohol.

  I took note that Milena Markivna also chewed a sprat before the first shot.

  Three rounds later, Konstantyn Illych was speaking of the tenets of futurist philosophy. He was about to show how he employed them in his poetry when I jumped in to ask about the letter of apology, due in fifteen days.

  “Mikhail Ivanovich,” he said. “Misha. Can I call you Misha?”

  “You may.” The home brew was softening my judgment and there was only one sprat left.

  “Fuck the letter, Misha. What is this, grade school?”

  I told him about the possible repercussions, that he might be fired or arrested. “You’re lucky,” I said. “In earlier times, a political joke meant ten years.”

  Konstantyn Illych set his empty shot glass upside down on his index finger like a thimble, twirled it in languid circles. “Once upon a time,” he began.

  I wanted to shake the letter out of him.

  “I got the flu,” he continued. “Ever get the flu?”

  “Sure.”

  “The flu turned into bronchitis and I ended up in the hospital. Not only did I get my own room, but by the end of the week the room was filled, and I mean floor-to-ceiling filled, with flowers and cards and jars of food from people I didn’t even know, people from all around the country.”

  Milena Markivna placed the last sprat between her lips and sucked it in until the tip of the tail disappeared into her mouth.

  Konstantyn Illych leaned in. “Imagine, Misha, what would happen if you tried to get me fired.”

  * * *

  —

  Another week passed without success. My superior remarked that I was usually quicker at obtaining a letter, and was I not dealing with someone who specialized in the written word, who could whip up a heartfelt apology in no time? I considered bribing the poet, but the mere thought felt unnatural, against the grain, against the direction a bribe usually slid. I began to neglect other tasks at work but still believed my persistence with Konstantyn Illych would be rewarded. I admit I thought of Milena Markivna as well, and often. She followed me into my dreams. Throughout my life, she would tell me in those dreams, I had been watched over. She would award me with a certificate signaling my entry into the Honor Guard, would place on my head a special canvas cap with a golden star on its front. I cannot say if this image is true to the initiation ceremony, but it was how I imagined it had happened with my mother. I would wake at night to find myself alone in my dark room but felt no fear. I knew I was being watched over.

  * * *

  —

  The day before the deadline I stood at the back of the town cinema, wat
ching Konstantyn Illych watch Hedgehog in the Fog. Eventually my attention turned to the animated film itself. I had already seen it a number of times and always found it unsettling—similar to the way heights are unsettling. En route to visit his friend for tea, Hedgehog gets lost in the fog that descends on the forest. It isn’t the fog or the forest that troubles me, although they trouble Hedgehog; what troubles me is this: Hedgehog sees a white horse and wonders if it would drown if it fell asleep in the fog. I’ve never understood the question. I suppose what Hedgehog means is: If the white horse stops moving, we would no longer see it in the white fog. But if we no longer see it, what is its state? Drowned or not? Dead or alive? The question is whether Hedgehog would prefer to keep the fog or have it lift only to discover what is behind its thick veil. I would keep the fog. For instance, I cannot know the whereabouts of my parents because they are part of me and therefore part of my personal file and naturally no one can see their own file, just like no one can see the back of their own head. My mother is standing proud among the Honor Guard. My mother is standing elsewhere. She is sitting. She is lying down. She is cleaning an aquarium while riding an elevator. Uncertainty contains an infinite number of certainties. My mother is in all these states at once, and nothing stops me from choosing one. Many people claim they like certainty, but I do not believe this is true—it is uncertainty that gives freedom of mind. And so, while I longed to be reassigned to Moscow and look for my parents, the thought of it shook me to the bones with terror.

  When the film ended, I felt a damp breath on the back of my neck. Milena Markivna’s voice whispered: “Meet me at the dacha at midnight. I’ll get you the letter.”

  * * *

  —

  It was a weekday, a Wednesday, and so the dachas were empty of people. The swamps were still flooded, but this time a sleek black rowboat waited for me. It barely made a seam in the water as I rowed. Northward, the overcast sky glowed from the lights of the town. My teeth chattered from cold or excitement or fear—it is difficult to keep still when one knows one’s life is about to change. Already I could feel, like a comforting hand on my shoulder, the double gold aiguillette worn by the Guard. The tall chrome leather boots tight around my calves.

  I tried to retrace the route I had taken the first time I visited the dacha, but found myself in the middle of a thicket of cattails. The glow of the sky suddenly switched off. (Normally electricity is cut not at night but in the evening, when people use it most, and thus the most can be economized—this is the thought I would have had had I not been engulfed in panic.) Darkness closed in on me. I circled on the spot. The cattails hissed against the edge of the boat. Willow branches snared my arms and face. A sulfurous stench stirred up from the boggy water. Milena Markivna had given me the simplest of tasks and I was about to fail her.

  A horizontal slit of light appeared in the distance, faint and quivering. I lurched the boat toward it. Soon I recognized the silhouette of the shack on stilts, the light emanating from under its door. I scrambled up the stairs, knocked. The lock clicked and I waited for the door to open, and when it did not, I opened it myself.

  A figure in a white uniform and mask stood before me, pointing a gleaming rapier at my chest. The figure looked like a human-size replica of the fencing trophies I had seen inside the glass display in Suite 76.

  “Close the door.” The voice behind the mask was calm, level, and belonged to Milena Markivna.

  I tried to keep calm as well, but my hand shook when it reached for the handle. I closed the door without turning away from her, keeping my eyes on the rapier. The ornate, patinated silver of its hilt suggested the weapon had been unearthed from another century.

  “Down on the floor. On your knees.”

  I had not imagined our meeting would be like this, but did as I was told. I inquired about the utility of having my ankles bound by rope and Milena Markivna explained it was to prevent me from running away before she was done. I assured her I wouldn’t think to run from such an important occasion and she, in turn, assured me she would skewer my heart onto one of my floating ribs if I tried. Before she stuffed a rag inside my mouth, I told her I had been waiting for this moment since I was a child, and she replied that she had been waiting for it since she was a child as well. I told her I was ready.

  She said, “I’m ready, too.”

  I do not know how much time passed with me kneeling, head bowed, as Milena Markivna stood over me.

  I tried to utter a word of encouragement, perhaps even mention my admiration for the canvas cap with the golden star on its front, but of course I couldn’t speak through the rag in my mouth. All I could do was breathe in the pickled smell of the fabric.

  She knelt down in front of me, one hand on the hilt of the rapier, its tip still quivering at my chest. With the other hand she took off her mask. Hair clung to her forehead, moist with sweat. I searched her face for approval or disappointment but it was closed to me, as if she were wearing a mask under the one she had just removed. I wondered how this would all look if a stranger barged through the door: she almost mad and I almost murdered.

  At last Milena Markivna stabbed the rapier into the floor, which made me cry out, and said there was really no hurry. She brought over a stout candle that had been burning on the table and dipped my fingers into the liquid wax, one by one, as she named her relatives who had been executed, one by one, thirty years ago. The burning was sharp at first—although I dared not cry out or make another sound—but soon felt like ice. Milena seemed calmer after this. She removed the rag from my mouth, unlaced her boots, set her bare feet on top of them, and gave me a series of instructions. As I bowed my head and enveloped her warm toes in my mouth—they had a fermented taste, not unpleasant, like rising dough—she reminded me how she hated me. I removed my lips from the mound of her ankle long enough to tell her that we were not so different, she and I; that I, too, had grown up alone, even though my solitude would end soon. As she picked up a second candle and began to tip it over my scalp, she asked how it would end. Barely able to speak now, I told her that it would end when she inducted me into the Honor Guard and I would go to Moscow and see my family again. She laughed as if I had told a joke. My head pulsed with pain; tears blurred my vision. The smell that greeted me was of singed pig flesh, sickening when I realized it was my own. Milena Markivna set the candle down and asked how I knew of my family’s whereabouts. I said it was what I had been told. As she slid her fingers along the blade of the rapier, she said the neighbor who had taken her in had promised that her family had gone to a better place, too, but never specified where or explained why they never wrote. The darkness of the night filtered in through the cracks of the shack and into my mind, and I began thinking of things I did not like to think about—of my mother and father and where they really might be. Milena Markivna wrapped her hand around the hilt of the rapier again and told me to take off my coat and shirt and lie facedown on the floor.

  As I did so, one thought knocked against the next, like dominoes:

  There was a possibility I was not, at present, being recruited.

  If not, there was no Honor Guard waiting for me.

  If not, my parents’ rank did not matter.

  If not, my parents did not have rank.

  If not, Mother was not in the Guard.

  If not, they were not in Moscow.

  The blade dragged from my tailbone up the thin skin of my spine, searing my mind clean. I screamed into my mouth so that no one would hear. When the blade reached between my shoulders it became warm, and from its point a sweet numbness spread through my arms. I thought of my father with his bleeding hands, understood that queer smile. My head spun and the walls began to undulate. My voice came hoarsely. “How do you know what happened to your family?”

  After a moment she said, “They disappeared. That’s how I know.”

  “They could be anywhere.”

  �
�Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.” My body shook against the damp floorboards. “No.”

  It was when I welcomed the blade that it lifted from my skin. I felt a tug between my ankles, then a loosening. She had cut the rope.

  “You can go.”

  “You’re not done.”

  “No,” she said, but still she pushed my shirt and coat toward me with her foot. I lay limp, spent. Through the window I could see the glow of the town flicker back on. I remembered why I had come to the dacha, but could not rouse myself to bring up the letter. I found I did not care about it much myself. I would be the one who would have to issue an apology to my superior tomorrow, giving an explanation for failing to complete my task. I would write it. My superior would read it. I would be dismissed. What next? I would stop by a news kiosk on my way home, search my pockets for the correct change. If I did not have it, a voice behind me might ask if someone has a kopek for the man. Surely enough, someone would.

  Before leaving, I asked Milena Markivna, “What was the joke your husband told?”

  “Oh.” She said, “****************************************************** ? *************************** .”

  “All this trouble for that?”

  It was the first time I saw her smile. “I know. It’s not even funny.”

  BONE MUSIC

  The first time Smena’s neighbor knocked on her door, she asked to borrow cloves. The woman stood in Smena’s doorway, clutching a canvas sack to her chest. Her diminutive frame barely reached the latch. “I’ll bring the cloves back,” she promised. “You can reuse them up to three times.”